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Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We're a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we're not too hungoverwe've been bailed outwe're not too exhausted from last night's (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and
weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our
boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late,
it's PhilJD's fault.

In the past Ablow has stated his position that "he is not convinced that transgender identity is real.

Because people are “not settled on the fact that when somebody says, declares, ‘I am of this gender,’ but they are anatomically and genetically of another gender,” Ablow said the gym should have been more forgiving to the woman who complained. “They need to account for that and not judge the folks who feel exposed.

--Ablow

Aidala said that from a legal standpoint, under Michigan law, the gym had every right to act as they did in revoking the disruptive woman's membership.

[W]e get tongue-tied, we can’t say the obvious, which is this is craziness! You’re kicking out members because they feel uncomfortable that someone who seems to be a man to them, and is genetically, is looking at them naked?!”

“We are being bullied into accepting things that are untrue to our core feelings."

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We're a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we're not too hungoverwe've been bailed outwe're not too exhausted from last night's (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and
weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our
boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late,
it's PhilJD's fault.

This past Friday the US Army suspended the direct discharge of soldiers on account of being transgender. Any such cases must henceforth be reviewed by the Assistant Secretary of the Army.

Today’s action by the Army helps over 6,000 transgender soldiers serving in silence.
While transgender service members welcome this step, they recognize it is only a stopgap measure aimed at making a failing policy fail less. What they and their commanders need is a comprehensive, Department-level policy review.

--Allyson Robinson, a former Army captain and SPARTA Director of Policy

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To tell this whole story has taken me nearly 20 years. I am bit a minor actor in it, but I proudly accepted the role of one of the storytellers. In 1995, Vigil was published at the website ftmInternational and it was there for many years. It is not anymore. 20 years was published on New Year's eve of 2013, twenty years after the the bodies were found.

The whole story is lengthy, but I hope you have time. The movie version was somewhat lacking in actual facts. The tabloid version didn't even come close.

This last week, there was the surprising start to a headline in the Washington Post that began, "GOP House and White House agree on something" ... and that something was: Amtrak funding (and pets on a train).

The Passenger Rail Reform and Investment Act passed on a vote of 316-101 (132 Republicans joined 184 Democrats in voting for the bill; 101 Republicans voted against). It keeps spending for Amtrak at nearly current levels — about $1.4 billion a year — for the next four years, and includes other reforms aimed at improving the railroad's fiscal performance.

... so that is a majority of the Republican majority voting for a bill that both Heritage Action and Club for Growth were scoring, looking for a "No" vote to gain their approval, and which the White House gave qualified approval to (though perhaps it helped some of those Republicans that they can point to parts of the bill that the White House did not approve of). And so the Northeast Corridor trains and long haul trains, alongside most of the state approved corridor services under 750 miles in length, can continue running.

But this was not an entirely "good news" week, since we also heard that Indiana DOT scuttles Amtrak Hoosier State. The Hoosier State is the "companion" train to the three-times-a-week Cardinal, and together the two provide for a daily connection from Indianapolis in the early hours of the morning, scheduled to arrive in Chicago in mid-morning. The Indiana DOT has declared its refusal to continue the service unless it gets to put the service together on its own terms, only using Amtrak for the elements of the service where Amtrak gets a better price than a private operator. And so customers of the Hoosier State service will be getting a special "April Fool's" gift in the form of a drop down from daily to three times a week rail access to Chicago.

More about the qualified good news and unqualified bad news, below the fold.

Today's offering was written shortly before the Christmas of 2008. Let me stir yor memory jut a bit by reminding you that President-elect Obama had chosen to have Rick Warren deliver they invocation at his Inauguration, which the LGBT community considered to be a huge slap in the face.

I had been looking for a hook or two on which to hang my weekly Friday column.

The snow was blowing and the wind was howling. It was going to be a dark and stormy night.

I graphic is called Hate 4, from my Colors of Hate series.

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Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We're a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we're not too hungoverwe've been bailed outwe're not too exhausted from last night's (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it's PhilJD's fault.